I’ve been thinking a lot about impact recently.

Not impact in the formal sense of research impact case studies or institutional metrics, although those are certainly part of the picture. Rather, I’ve been thinking about the word itself and what we actually mean when we use it.

Impact is one of those terms that appears everywhere in higher education. We are asked to demonstrate impact in promotion applications, fellowship submissions, annual reviews and job applications. Strategic plans reference impact. Leaders talk about impact. Funding bodies ask for impact. Recruitment panels look for evidence of impact.

Yet despite how often we use the term, I am not convinced we always mean the same thing.

What exactly counts as impact?

Perhaps part of my fascination with this question comes from viewing the world through a neurodivergent lens. One of the things I have learned about myself since my autism and ADHD diagnoses is that I often find myself wanting to understand what people actually mean when they use a term. Not the broad intention, but the definition. What are the criteria? How will it be judged? What does success look like?

Many people seem comfortable working with concepts that are loosely defined. I tend to find myself pulling at the threads. I need something tangible; what exactly do I need to do/say? What evidence is needed and from where or whom?

The more I hear people talk about impact, the more questions I seem to have.

When someone is told they need to demonstrate greater impact, what are they really being asked to show?

At first glance, the answer appears straightforward. Impact is often associated with change. A policy is introduced. A process is improved. Student outcomes increase. Satisfaction scores rise. A service expands. More people engage.

These examples are important; they provide evidence that something has changed.

They also happen to be the forms of impact that are often easiest to measure.

Higher education has become increasingly comfortable with metrics. We count attendance, progression, continuation, recruitment, satisfaction, engagement and achievement. We track trends, benchmark performance and compare outcomes.

There is nothing inherently wrong with this. Metrics matter.

The challenge arises when measurable impact becomes the default definition of impact. We can’t turn everything into numerical data, nor should we. If we try to, we lose the richness and diversity of qualitative data. In my mind, its importance in higher education is implied but sharing the same root of the word “quality”. (The irony of me saying something is implied and not explicit here is not lost on me!).

Some of the most meaningful work I encounter in higher education is difficult to quantify.

How do we measure increased confidence?

What metric captures trust between teams?

How do we evidence that a student feels a stronger sense of belonging?

How do we quantify a colleague feeling empowered to contribute, challenge or lead?

How do we measure the value of making a complex system easier to navigate?

These things matter. In many cases they may be the very foundations upon which measurable outcomes are built. Yet because they are harder to count, they can sometimes feel less visible and, in some cases, less important.

I have also found myself questioning the relationship between scale and significance.

Imagine two scenarios.

In the first, a new process saves five minutes for thousands of students.

In the second, a member of staff provides support that enables a struggling student to remain on their course and complete their degree.

Which had the greater impact?

The first affected more people.

The second may have changed the trajectory of someone’s life.

Most of us would probably agree that both examples are valuable yet they represent very different forms of impact. One demonstrates reach while the other demonstrates depth.

The difficulty is that we do not always make these distinctions explicit.

This becomes even more complicated when considering leadership.

Many leadership activities operate indirectly. Relationships are strengthened. Teams collaborate more effectively. Confidence grows. Silos reduce. Communication improves. People begin approaching problems differently.

The resulting impact may emerge gradually over months or years. It may be shared across multiple individuals. It may be impossible to attribute to a single person.

Yet few would argue that these changes are unimportant.

In fact, some of the most transformative changes I have witnessed have begun with conversations rather than policies, relationships rather than structures, and trust rather than targets.

Perhaps what I am really questioning is whether impact and value are the same thing.

Impact asks what changed.

Value asks why that change mattered.

The two are connected, but they are not interchangeable.

A process improvement that affects thousands of people clearly has value.

Equally, helping one student remain at university, one colleague feel supported, or one team work together more effectively may have value that extends far beyond what any metric can capture.

Neither should be dismissed simply because it is harder to measure.

There is another reason why I think this matters. Ambiguous concepts can create barriers.

This is not exclusively a neurodivergent issue. Most people have probably experienced feedback that felt frustratingly vague. Many of us have been told to demonstrate more leadership, show greater strategic influence, or evidence more impact without being entirely sure what those terms meant in practice.

However, neurodivergence has perhaps made me more aware of the challenge.

When expectations remain implicit, success often depends on correctly interpreting what somebody else intended but did not explicitly state. Two people can hear the same instruction and walk away with entirely different understandings of what is required.

The issue is not that standards should be lower or expectations simplified. It is that clarity matters.

If impact is important, then surely we should be clearer about how we define it, recognise it and evaluate it.

Perhaps the real challenge is not that higher education places too much emphasis on impact.

Perhaps it is that we have become so accustomed to using the word that we rarely stop to examine what we mean by it.

The more I reflect on impact, the less convinced I am that it can be reduced to a single measure.

Some impact is broad. Some is deep.

Some is measurable. Some is relational.

Some is immediate. Some takes years to emerge.

Some changes systems. Some changes lives.

All of it matters.

The question is whether our understanding of impact is broad enough to recognise that.